Growing the Writer Within

In the Spring of 2011 Ruth Folit invited me to do something I had never done before: lead an online writing practice group. Ruth is the designer/producer of LifeJournal, journal software and the founder/director of the International Association for Journal Writing. Our writing practice sessions aren’t really “online,” they’re more “live chat” with participants from across the country and anywhere in the world connecting via phone or Skype. Following is a blog Ruth posted at IAJW‘s site, which she graciously allowed me to repost as a guest blog.

Online Writing Practice—Growing the Writer Within

A couple of days ago was the first of a handful of Wednesdays with Judy Reeves in what’s known as an Online Writing Practice.  It’s an hour of time spent, mid-day, with a writers of any shape, size, age, gender, or level of experience.

I can imagine that the process does sound odd—people on the phone writing separately, yet together, in response to a Continue reading

20 Ways to Make It Better (#3)

#3 Get It Down

Just Write Board Game

The most important thing about writing? Writing. Getting the words on the page. How to do it? Keep your pen moving. Or your fingers dancing on those keys. Never mind if you don’t know where you’re going. Just go. If you trust yourself and the process, what you want to write will show up on the page. Not in its final form, not all polished and pretty and ready for glory, but somewhere within the mess you made will be that image, that phrase, that line of dialogue. What you’d never come up with if you’d tried to “think” it on the page.

Begin anywhere. Write anything. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar. You can clean it up later. Don’t stop to re-read or edit or fix. When you do, you move from that white-hot place of intuition and imagination and into a cerebral place of judging, evaluating, analyzing. There’s a time and place for that, but not in the first flush of creating. One of the advantages of keeping the hand moving is that you can keep ahead of the editor, the critic, and the censor. And maybe, if you’re very lucky and very fast, you can even outpace your ego.

There are dozens of methods to just getting it down: timed, focused writings; free-writes; writing in group; writing against deadline. Try setting up word counts or pages or time limits for yourself, make writing dates with someone else, or with yourself (put it on your calendar — in ink). Use writing prompts or writing exercises to get started (I know a great book that has a prompt for every day). Get writing assignments from someone else, or from any number of writing books. (My current favs are Naming the World, Now Write!, What If?, and Abigail Thomas’s Thinking About Memoir.) Having someone else — a coach, a writing buddy, a writing group, to report in to can help, too. Making bets, giving yourself rewards, bribery. I do some of all of these. (I especially like the rewards part.) Find out what works for you and then, as the saying goes, Just Do It!

What’s your best bet for just getting it down?